Internet Business Mastery: Business Development and Internet Marketing for the Web 2.0 Age

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In my previous article “ What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?” I provided a basic introduction to SEO is and why it is important for your overall Internet marketing game plan. I also mentioned that my next article would be discussing keywords and why they are important to SEO.

I am going to split the subject of keywords and keyword research into a couple of segments. First I will discuss what are keywords and how will they help you bring more targeted traffic to your site. Next I will explain broad, phrase and exact keyword matching. Finally I will show you how to find the best terms and phrases and some tools that will make your research a bit easier. So let’s get started.

What are Keywords and Key Phrases?

A keyword is a word that relates to your particular vertical market. Key Phrases are groups of words that relate to a particular market. “dog” is a keyword “dog training” is a key phrase.

To show you how keywords and phrases are useful let’s use Internet business mastery as an example, “Internet business” would be a good example of a key phrase that relates to Internet business mastery. Since Sterling and Jay’s primary focus for their site is to teach people how to start Internet businesses this would appear to be a good key phrase for them. People looking to start an Internet business would probably type that term into a search engine and if the site is properly optimized for that particular phrase it will show in the search results and send people can find Sterling and Jay’s site.

Not all Keywords are created equal

Another phrase that relates to Internet Business Mastery’s market would be “online business”.
The challenge with that particular key phrase is that like “Internet business” “online business” is incredibly competitive. Meaning there are a lot of other websites that are competing to rank for that particular set of phrases. 388,000,000 competing sites in Google for “online business” and 431,000,000 competing sites in Google for the phrase “Internet business”. So if you are not an authority site like Internet Business Mastery, you will have a difficult time getting your site to the first page of search results.

Market Phrase Verses Niche Phrase

The ideal set of keywords and key phrases would be words and phrases that have the most people searching with the least number of websites competing for those particular terms. The more competitive words and phrases will probably be related more to a wider more generalized segment of a particular market and although they may have a lot of folks searching for them they may not provide you with people who are searching for “exactly” what you have to offer. Your particular specialty or unique offer within that market phrase is called a “niche”.

To show you the difference between a market phrase opposed to a niche phrase lets look at the term “dog training”. That particular key phrase gets around 73,644 searches a day but has over 4,940,000 other sites competing to be on the first page of Google. It is pretty generalized so it would be considered a market phrase.

Now what if you did not actually train all breeds of dogs? What if you only trained German shepherds? After doing a little research I found that the phrase “training german shepherd” gets around 1,989 searches a day with only 27,200 websites competing for that particular phrase. Keywords relating to training German shepherds would be considered “niche” search terms.

So even though “dog training” gets a TON of search traffic you are going to have to beat out 4,940,000 other competing sites and unless you are a very skilled search professional it is going to take quite a long time to get your site on the first page of search results. If you did manage to make it to the top the vast majority of people searching for “dog training” will probably leave your site because in actuality you only train German shepherds. Going after the term “training german shepherd” would be a much easier fish to fry and send quality visitors to your site much faster.

The brunt of your internet marketing efforts and keyword research should focus on finding highly focused niche phrases and keywords that relate most to your particular business and will provide quality traffic that is not as competitive as broad market phrases.

So now that we have a basic overview of what keywords and key phrases are. The next article will discuss the difference between broad, phrase and exact keyword matching. I hope this article was helpful and until next week happy Internet marketing!

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Rob Burns is an internet marketing expert. He consults, speaks and writes about search engine optimization, internet marketing, and social media. For more of his irreverent tidbits on internet marketing visit Rob Burns Brain.com